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“To duplicate and to be duplicitous” Review of James Tadd Adcox’s REPETITION

When
writing my academic letters of interest, I almost always use a basic, self-made
template. Within this template, there is a paragraph whose details shift—ever-so slightly—to strategically recalibrate
this portrait of myself as an “academic.”With a few performative
clicks of the keys, “selective liberal arts
college”becomes “research institution,”the phrase “diversity”becomes “polyvocality,”and the name of some press
or some magazine shifts to some craftily emphasized other. I am the puppet
master of this bullshit theater of myself: hovering, pulling, snipping strings
to my own dancing simulacra!

Such
is the absurd performative tapestry of James Tadd Adcox’s Repetition, a
devastatingly honest and humorous novella. Framed from the fictional but
excruciatingly realistic perspective of an aspiring (untenured) Assistant
Professor, Repetition follows his account of a conference dedicated to
Constantin Constantius, the fictional performance of a real philosopher (aka
the pseudonym of Søren
Kierkegaard.)
Herein, academia’s hierarchies, rituals, and
unspoken rules of engagement are beautifully deconstructed, all within the
context (as we later learn) of the narrator’s necessary recollection, his
repetitive reconstruction of events.

Repetition’s narrator depicts his
colleagues with scathingly precise, defensively derisive character analyses
that reveal more about the observer than his subjects. His wife—whom he dismissively
describes as a bitter “adjunct”—is “attractive, in a tall gangly
way”primarily derived from her
admission “that she had no idea, in
particular, where to put her arms while she kissed [him].”His research assistant,
Sandra (whom he suddenly realizes he is in love with,) is only lovely insomuch
as her admiration for an (undeserving) other renders her so, a double of his
wife who appears “tall and somewhat gangly,”until transformed by the
frenetic, tearful, pacing power of her lovelorn energies. His arch nemesis—Constantius Society leader
Professor Thomas Grinding—wears “a baseball cap even when…dressed in a suit,”hoping “for it to come off as a
quirk or affectation, when in fact [trying] simply to hide that apart from the
ponytail and some tufts of hair at his temples, he [is] almost entirely bald.”His secondary nemesis—the (married) object of
Sandra’s admiration—is an insipidly casual “tenured half-wit”in “cut-off jeans and…Converses…two full sleeves of
inoffensive tattoos”who probably includes “the name of whatever
terrible band he played in on his CV.”

Worth
noting, here: Adcox sneaks in some particularly sick burns related to others’(imagined) CVs. He projects
how the Constantius conference might appear on the CV of a posturing adjunct
attendee, “what a sad little line, too:
‘Attended such-and-such
conference.’I wondered how many such
lines his CV contained.”Worth noting, here, also: my
(not yet finished) review of this book is already a line on my CV. It reads, “Repetition, James Tadd Adcox—book review—(magazine TBA), 2017.”

Adcox
describes the hierarchical scrabblings of this Constantius
conference with
the kind of mad-grinning, gleeful incisiveness that can only come from one who
has personally suffered through them. Repetition’s self-serious narrator—who obsessively analyzes his
surroundings while remaining relatively un-self-aware—is the perfect vehicle for
Adcox’s hilarious portraits of
petty academic power dynamics. Take this restaurant scene, for example, wherein
the narrator quietly duels with Professor Grinding (over the course of two
pages) for the seat next to their privileged conference guest, Dr. Florantine:

Oh, what I would have given to have a
spy in the room at that moment, to record the expression that must have crossed
Grinding’s face as Professor
Florentine walked past him on one side, I on the other, to take our seats at
the far end of the table from him! His position so sure a minute ago—everything calculated exactly—and just as suddenly, defeat
! Crushing and total defeat! God, how his blood must have boiled! I, of course,
I did not allow myself so much as a glance at his face as I walked by—this, too, part of my
revenge, it was important that he understand how little his defeat meant to me,
how dimly he shone in the light of my own success.

Amidst
this atmosphere of scholarly competition, posturing, and performance anxiety,
Adcox slyly guides the reader’s
attention toward the details our narrator is too conference-obsessed to notice,
suggesting his energies have long been diverted toward the wrong channels.

As his
wife prepares him a celebratory breakfast and expresses her wish to attend the
conference, he is consumed with irritation over the fact that she is awake
earlier than usual, disrupting the repetition of his daily habit patterns. When
these patterns are again disrupted by his sudden love for Sandra, the narrator
physically represses his “confused”emotions: “I begin to stammer, my face
turns red and I can feel it radiate heat…And the pain from my liver spreads
throughout my torso in a series of dull, languorous throbs.”Within the text itself, Repetition’s narrator pushes his
darker, subtextual reflections into that chasm all too familiar to thought spiraling
academics: the footnote. In moments of extreme narrative duress, the inferior
footnote text swells, howling to be heard, consuming the page.

As
the biggest, deepest pool of the narrator’s misdirected efforts, the Constantius
conference beautifully articulates those captive thought cycles, dually
speaking in the words of the real Kierkegaard and his pseudonym
Constantius, the real-fake Constantius and Adcox’s fake-real Constantius performance,
the venerable keynote speaker Professor Florantine, and his recalled—recorded—voice (“The file for which,
fortunately,”the narrator notes, “is still accessible via my
personal email.”)

The voice of psychology says to the
individual: No matter what you think your reasons may be, there exists a true,
hidden reason for doing this thing, which can only be true so long as it is
hidden and will be kept hidden so long as it is true. In this way psychology
ultimately creates an entire other self to a person, which cannot be known, and
if known, becomes untrue. Thus we find ourselves in an infinite regress: as
soon as knowledge of the self comes into consciousness, it must be understood
as a lie, based on some new, anterior self. To be conscious therefore is to
lie, to have hidden reasons, to duplicate and to be duplicitous.

Thus,
Adcox artfully outlines the circularity of Repetition’s dramatic evolution,
developing our philosophical appreciation of its revelations before—and beyond—the narrator’s own understanding. Without
revealing the surprise events of Repetition’s continuing “anterior”spiral, I will simply praise
its remarkable ability to “duplicate
and to be duplicitous”while creating something
exciting and wholly singular in its sensation. (October 2016)